CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Five => Big Ten => Topic started by: bayareabadger on June 09, 2020, 11:00:34 PM
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So in one of the other threads, CW mentioned his irritation at misused military terms in articles. Basically, the idea is that the stories had to stand up to someone with a higher level of expertise, which it probably should.
This got me thinking about football.
I'm kind of a dork. In my free time, I try to consume technical football stuff. At one point in the past month, I watched 90 minutes of receiver clinic. They ran like 2-3 actual different routes. Everything was about where to place one's hands to get space (also if it's an out-breaking route, look in right at the break to throw DBs). I'm in the middle of something about Oregon's outside zone scheme and the finer points of the flow of it.
(Football is also weird because it's a sport we literally can't see the whole picture of unless we're in the building and have a good eye for it. Quality replays we can analyze are few and far between)
And I found it interesting because huge portions of football writing don't touch on this. Like I'm sure football coaches often scoff at some of the things that are written, both by reporters and fans. But what's interesting is that fans, by and large, not only don't care, but much of the time the tone of fans carries farther away from the technical stuff and farther into the more juicy faux-controversial stuff. This in turn lends credence to writers who ... don't exactly stoke that controversy, but slide in with the fan flow.
A few examples. Badger fans swore and still swear that Chryst ran outside too much and threw too much in the TCU Rose Bowl. But if you go back and watch knowing the runs UW uses, it's kind of a normal gameplan. They mix in a few but not too many passes on run downs, they ran a normal blend of the three run schemes they had. They just lost at enough small junctures, had enough miscues and messed up field position enough to blow the game.
Another would be the early Michigan offense in 2018. There was all this lamenting it was just run-run-pass and not enough complexity. And then if you watch, it was a really diverse scheme, just not a well-run one. To hear the commentary, they were going 22 personnel and running iso to one side.
But the lamentations were more interesting. They settled into narratives. They made the sport more fascinating in its way. In essence, the not knowing the expertise prevents things from being mundane.
I don't know what it tells us about us. This place is obviously better than a lot of homer boards. But I thought it was interesting that often the expertise becomes not only something that's not paid attention to, but something that takes away from the juicy stuff we might dig into.
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the O-coordinator has no chance with the fans
if the play is not executed and fails, it was a bad call
most fans don't have the same idea of defensive play calling and therefore the D-coordinator is just criticized for having a bad scheme and not playcalling
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the O-coordinator has no chance with the fans
if the play is not executed and fails, it was a bad call
most fans don't have the same idea of defensive play calling and therefore the D-coordinator is just criticized for having a bad scheme and not playcalling
As an amateur film nerd, defensive structuring is still a mess to figure out. And you see even less of it than the offense.
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Another would be the early Michigan offense in 2018. There was all this lamenting it was just run-run-pass and not enough complexity. And then if you watch, it was a really diverse scheme, just not a well-run one. To hear the commentary, they were going 22 personnel and running iso to one side.
I thought it was the opposite? That it was too complex. That in an age where teams were realizing it was better to run your offense faster and simpler, keep the defense on their toes, and run fewer designed plays, that your players executed better, Michigan was instead going slower, and running more complicated formations and plays.
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Defenses all look the same to me. Yes, we all see at times a safety shading the line and expecting a blitz, etc. But the defensive lineup 8 seconds before the snap all look to me like a 4-3-4, even the 3-4 usually has four guys down. The "prevent" looks different, sure. I guess the nickel and dime packages substitute lighter players, but they line up the same, it seems to me.
I spend some time in games I don't care who wins looking at the D almost entirely. I'm not nerdy enough.
Is the 3-4 really a 3-4? UGA runs it and they often have 5 in the middle LOS, I know the two outer guys are LBs, and often one will drop and one will rush, so maybe the 3-4 is often a 5-2 personnel aside. Maybe the way to track this is the average weight of the defenders on the field rather than where they line up.
That would be a neat running stat. I wonder how much it would vary for one team.
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I thought it was the opposite? That it was too complex. That in an age where teams were realizing it was better to run your offense faster and simpler, keep the defense on their toes, and run fewer designed plays, that your players executed better, Michigan was instead going slower, and running more complicated formations and plays.
I mean, the actual problem was that it was too complex. But for a while the complaint was that is wasn't advanced enough, like it was big, dumb old-school football.
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Yeah, the 3-4 often becomes a 5-2, on certain downs. And there's those times teams only rush 2 guys, which I probably would never do.
How confusing a defense is rests largely with how well certain players know the scheme. You don't want a guy out of position if he's not entirely sure where he needs to head (and quickly) as the ball is being snapped. But for guys with a good grasp on things, they're the LBs and Safeties who are moving around pre-snap, messing with the QB.
I'd like to learn more about the 3-3-5, as I never really experienced it. I'd be terrified of getting gashed by the run game, but I'm sure there are aspects to it that combat that.
And TCU's goal of funneling running plays to the outside instead of the inside is a different idea.
Anyway, whether on offense or defense, step 1 should be using a few plays/formations perfectly before worrying about variety and deception.
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the O-coordinator has no chance with the fans
if the play is not executed and fails, it was a bad call
most fans don't have the same idea of defensive play calling and therefore the D-coordinator is just criticized for having a bad scheme and not playcalling
Yep. Most of us think we know something about offense, so we think we can critique specific things diagnose what the O-Coordinator is doing wrong.
Not so much with defense.
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Defense is hard because once you want to implement even rudimentary zone schemes, players suck at understanding territory and that they're covering a guy once he's in their territory and they're releasing him once he leaves.
They tend to either get lost looking at the QB, react too late to a guy entering his space, or staying with him far too long.
That, and if you have d-linemen who want to make plays instead of doing their job. That's a biggie, too.
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I'm not astute enough to understand defense. I like when Todd Blackledge is doing color, he says stuff that educates me. I'm surprised there isn't a show on ESPN 23 that delves into the intricacies of CFB and replays certain plays to show what is happening.
SEC N has mostly burfle, Finebaum is mostly unwatchable. I would watch Blackledge dissect various schemes and plays for hours on end.
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I'm not astute enough to understand defense. I like when Todd Blackledge is doing color, he says stuff that educates me. I'm surprised there isn't a show on ESPN 23 that delves into the intricacies of CFB and replays certain plays to show what is happening.
SEC N has mostly burfle, Finebaum is mostly unwatchable. I would watch Blackledge dissect various schemes and plays for hours on end.
Oddly, Tony Romo is a really good commentator for NFL broadcasts. I never would have thought that would be the case.
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I'm not astute enough to understand defense. I like when Todd Blackledge is doing color, he says stuff that educates me. I'm surprised there isn't a show on ESPN 23 that delves into the intricacies of CFB and replays certain plays to show what is happening.
SEC N has mostly burfle, Finebaum is mostly unwatchable. I would watch Blackledge dissect various schemes and plays for hours on end.
Defensive structuring is tricky, and it's extra tricky when you're watching from the side, which flattens out everything horizontally. This is honestly one reason I love when they give you the big game feed options because the sky-cam and All-22 are super informative if one wants to spend the time.
I know SECN does a half hour film room. It's not as dense as I'd like, but there's value.
But some of it gets back to my main point. It's super niche. Lamenting "that tight end got pushed back and the runner didn't adjust" isn't quite as fun to discuss, especially if you have to watch 2-3 times to see it.
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Give Todd Blackledge an hour show and I would save time to watch it.
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They used to do it with Edge NFL Matchup or something with Jawarski and Merrill Hodge. Idk if it went away bc people weren't watching or what. But they really broke it down.
Cincy, I'm sure you're selling yourself short.
I feel like we all know the basics - DTs have a gap/occupy 2 blockers or head-up on a guy. Ends are pass-rushers and/or are containing things. LBs are keying on guards on running plays, buying time until exploding towards the ball, once they know where it's going. Their toughest thing, as I previously mentioned, is zone defense.
OLBs and CBs have to set the edge on running plays. Corners are all about eyes and hips. They've got to know the opponent's route tree and when to commit or hold off - especially concerning the first down marker.
Safeties have to realize they're the last line and act like it. They usually get free paths to ball-carriers, which is nice. Their toughest job is not reacting immediately on combo routes - jumping the short one and allowing the ball over their head.
That's all about jobs and not the "how" to do it. That part is probably lacking most in coaching - it's hard enough for players to understand their jobs, so you may not have the necessary time to break down HOW they should be successful. Using your hands, keeping your eyes up, and efforting every play are universal, anyway.
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When I coached HS on the rez, we'd meet as coaches and I'd be noting all of these things we could play off of and break tendencies, etc and it was all for naught. We weren't there yet and likely never get there.
Kids playing both ways who didn't grow up watching football and are just doing it for something to do until basketball season made it pretty limited. I'm sure most every coach from big HS and up has a ton of info/ideas/plans in his back pocket, but if the players don't have the wherewithal to handle them, it becomes irrelevant.
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I used to watch Edge NFL matchup from time to time. Jaws would spend 10 minutes breaking down why a 15 yard pass worked.
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That's why football actually is a good corollary to war. It's not as important or anything, but everyone is assigned a physical chore and you're only successful if everyone does their job.
Just on a screen pass, you have linemen initially blocking for just the right amount of time before releasing to get out and upfield, a QB often having to drop a pass over D-linemen to a RB who had to mimic some other play before receiving the ball...and THEN the footballing happens. Linemen have to just bum-rush defenders and smother them or at least get their head across, the RB has to read those blocks and sometimes speed past his blockers, if there's heat from behind. WRs this whole time start out by seeing how far they can trick DBs into following them downfield, before turning into blockers themselves - a skill they're not practicing all that much.
"We're dealing with a lot of shit here" - Bull Durham
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Football might be a good corollary to a war game, like the force-on-force training that goes on at the Army's National Training Center in California, but not to war itself.
War is Hell. War is cruelty. War is not sporting. War is pulling your hand out of a bunch of goo that used to be your buddy's face. War is looking at your guts spill out of your belly as you slowly die.
Football is a game.
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We all know that.
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Of course we do. We all do.
That's why you said that football is a good corollary to war.
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American war is more akin to bringing massive firepower down on suspected enemy. That has no corollary to football really where both sides are limited by rules, even if Alabama is playing Charleston Southern.
What's amazing really is how in American wars, Charleston Southern often prevails.
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I used to watch Edge NFL matchup from time to time. Jaws would spend 10 minutes breaking down why a 15 yard pass worked.
me too
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I never caught that show. I recall seeing Fromm come up to the line and look over the defense, which to me nearly always looked like every defensive set the other team had all day excepting extreme downs. Fromm would give hand and verbal signals. Maybe he was calling off blocking assignments to the OL. Hand signals may have simply directed the back to run left or right.
I dunno, the defense looked like a standard set to me, usually. Obviously, if you see the safety creeping up, there's a sign.
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I never caught that show. I recall seeing Fromm come up to the line and look over the defense, which to me nearly always looked like every defensive set the other team had all day excepting extreme downs. Fromm would give hand and verbal signals. Maybe he was calling off blocking assignments to the OL. Hand signals may have simply directed the back to run left or right.
I dunno, the defense looked like a standard set to me, usually. Obviously, if you see the safety creeping up, there's a sign.
I mean, there's all sorts of minutia. Are inside defenders on inside or outside shoulders or certain linemen? If the formation shaded to the tight end? Does a team go with one-high safety pre/post snap?
Shoot, big chunks of things come down to which side of a blocker a defender can get his head on.
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Yeah, with the TV sideline angle, I can't tell how they are lined up, but it looks the same play after play other than 3rd and long or short. I also wonder if a defense is shading right a bit and the QB calls an audible, they should shift left a bit as the clock runs down. I know they do this on occasion.
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if a defense is disguising their play, the formation should look the same every time
if the safety is creeping up, is it a decoy or a real blitz?
sometimes this can be seen from watching film of blitzes, by noticing if the 3 other D-backs are moving to cover for the blitzer
can the safety look off the QB and bait a pass? to attempt an INT?
all good stuff
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When I coached HS on the rez, we'd meet as coaches and I'd be noting all of these things we could play off of and break tendencies, etc and it was all for naught. We weren't there yet and likely never get there.
Kids playing both ways who didn't grow up watching football and are just doing it for something to do until basketball season made it pretty limited. I'm sure most every coach from big HS and up has a ton of info/ideas/plans in his back pocket, but if the players don't have the wherewithal to handle them, it becomes irrelevant.
You can not do tactically, what you cannot do technically.
I think every coach, everywhere, at every level probably struggles with this. But in youth sports, it's king.
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You can not do tactically, what you cannot do technically.
I think every coach, everywhere, at every level probably struggles with this. But in youth sports, it's king.
This is what pissed me off about John Shoop's tenure as Purdue's OC.
Maybe he's an offensive genius. Maybe his schemes are world-beating. But he never had enough practice time for players to make it automatic muscle memory, so it always seemed to be a bunch of smoke and mirrors over bad execution.
Then I watch the Air Raid guys who install their offense in 3 days. Guys like Leach who only teach [most] WRs their route trees from one side of the formation, because he doesn't want to confuse them. They understand that scheme is important, but you can only make a scheme as complex as the ability to execute.
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Of course we do. We all do.
That's why you said that football is a good corollary to war.
Go invent a squabble with someone else. Did you read the second sentence of my post or just the first and began frothing at the mouth?
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The QB is going to identify the MLB for the OL and the coverage: man or zone (cover 1, 2, or 3).
Any hand gestures are for the WRs. If they know what they're doing, it's like baseball between the pitcher and catcher, and they'll have fake gestures and such.